The meaning of the Guru ideal

By Shri Kshetralal Saha

The highest and finest element in man's life, the most intimate principle of it is his soul, his immortal Self divine. But man has got only a faint idea of it. He has no distinct sense of that profound truth of his eternal life. The different systems of religious feeling, thought and practice are the various ways of realization of that truth. But these regulated efforts are liable to go in vain, to end in fumes instead of bringing illumination if they do not find their anchorage infirm devotion to the Guru.

The Guru is the living symbol, the concrete representative, of the eternal entity, the Supreme Self of man. The Srimad Bhagavata calls that external yet internal Self of man Gurudevatma as well as Karnadhar (XI. Ch.2 and 20), implying the all-sustaining ever-elevating inner Spirit as well as the outer adviser, permanent pilot-preceptor, the visible guardian-angel of life. The comprehension and quest of the everlasting Self must be continuous. It is to be brought into a definite course of thought and action in the service, submission and devotion that every man is required to render to the Guru.

The moral and spiritual institution of Guru-bhakti or reverence and devotion to the religious teacher and master known as the Guru, is not a form of idle orthodoxy, no time-honoured mode of self-deception of credulous fools. It is a psycho-scientifically discovered course of realization of the Spirit. The Guru is indispensable in religion. The Christians have got their patron-saints as well as God-fathers and God-mothers, besides the idea of identifying the spiritual teacher with Christ as the Son of God or God incarnate. The Muslims have got their Guru-ideal involved in the fact of holding the name of the Prophet in their fundamental formula of religion. In their solemn central ideal utterance the Guru stands by the side of God. People ignorantly refer to the Christians and Muslims as those who have got nothing to do with the Guru. Jesus Christ found his Guru, the ideal and the teacher in John the Baptist. This is one view point from which to study the subtle question of the Guru. There is another standpoint, a higher philosophical standpoint.

The Guru is a supremely loving individual Divine, performing a beneficial function of God, who is all love and wisdom and power. An ever-shining beam of the loving kindness and grace of the Divine Being takes the form of an affectionate divinity, who is appointed to permanently look after the spiritual as well as the mundane well-being of every living being, every man, every god and demigod. He follows every person as the kindest father and friend of millions and millions of years, from birth to birth and death to death in thousands of his or her lives in expectation of the happy moment when the individual will be conscious of the ministrations of his eternal friend and guardian angel following his footsteps day and night, the happy moment when he will turn his eyes on him, surrender his life to him and accept him into his heart for what he is.

The moral test and mystery of the matter lies in this that the divine friend and guardian that the Guru is, is to be found, is to be realized in a human being who will become divine for him from that very moment. The Guru stands beside every man the moment that he is brought into existence and follows him through all conditions of his life, in all his careers from birth to birth, never taking his affectionate eye away from his ward and seeking his greatest good. He suffers his sorrows and griefs and enjoys his pleasures and delights with him. He does not, he cannot interfere in the course of a person's life to lift or exalt him from his worldly condition as against his Karma-consequences, until and unless he seeks his master and looks to him, though the master is ever eager to rescue him, to love him. He is ever ready to do everything for him on condition of an earnest request on the part of the sufferer. Otherwise the Guru will be there as a principle of sympathy, tense with affection and love, yet unable to do anything.

The Guru is a profound spiritual principle of man's earthly life. The determinants divine are not only the two stated in the Mundakopanishad, Dva suparna sakhaya, the Atma and Paramatma, the Soul and God, but a third, the Guru, a divine power which is to be realized on earth in a human being. The Guru is there to manage, it may be after hundreds of lives, in millions of years, to make the individual emerge out of the deep quagmire of his life and emancipate him from the bonds of desire, to place him face to face with the Divine Person and ratify his union with Him in an eternal life of bliss and beauty in order for him to enjoy with his Master as a shining ever-living person. This is for the man whose ideal is love of God, called bhakti. But for him who has pursued an absolute egoistic-psychic or Yogic Culture or who has endeavoured to identify himself with the unthinkable, unspeakable, unspecifiable, undeterminable divine Truth, the eternal substance of the universe, the Guru has got a different way. He leads him through an abstract course of culture that slowly subtlizes and etherealises his self, so that he finally passes into the eternal infinitude of being, with all the urges of life merging in it.

The final realization of the highest spiritual purpose of life that man expects to achieve through religious practice, thought and feeling depends on complete self-surrender to the living ideal that dwells at the heart of every religion. But it is very difficult to control and concentrate the inner life with a view to surrendering one's self to an abstract conception, to an uncertain idea. It is here that arises the great need of the Guru, who is and who is to be made in thought and sentiment, the incarnation of the conception, the realization of the ideal in a concrete human shape.

The manifestation of the divine master, the Guru that is to be before the physical eye, takes place in the idealizing heart through a dynamic course of spiritual ideation and creation. It is a subtle and strenuous process in which the ideal and the real, the heavenly and the terrestrial, are brought into union, into everlasting harmony. The Guru is a profound romance of human life. He or She is to be idealized and realized and installed in life as its Beloved Lord and this purpose is to be fulfilled through faith, wisdom and devoted endeavour. You must be seated on the aeroplane of the grace of the Guru, which is earned by devotion, in order to mount the heights of eternal bliss.

The Guru is Isvara

One should be wholeheartedly devoted to one's Guru because he is, unlike us, not a person of attachment, but is, indeed, deep within free. The Guru has come to teach us, through the example of His or Her own life. We will be quickly rewarded if we devote ourselves to our Guru, regarding Him or Her as Isvara come in the guise of the Guru to give us the grace of jnana. Is not Isvara all and does He or She not become all and everything? Stone, earth, everything is Isvara. What objection can there be then to Iswara being present in the person of a Guru?

If we look at the subject from this angle, the question arises as to who we are if we are not Isvara. If we are each one of us Isvara, the next question is why we should be devoted to another person and regard him as the Guru and Isvara.

Everything is Iswara, but one's own Isvaratva (quality of being the Lord) is not recognised by oneself. Do we realise even a bit of our Isvaratva? If we knew, would there be so much untruth, so much sinfulness? Though Iswara is everything (or everything is Iswara), without knowing ourselves fully that we are Isvara, we exist as the disguises or forms Iswara has adopted. All of us, in our disguise of ignorance, are unable to recognise (or identify) the Original Person. The one whom we call Guru is not in such a ridiculous guise as we are. In our Guru it is possible to recognise this Original Person. So if we become devoted to the divinity in him we too can realize the Divine. That Isvaratva which cannot be discerned in ourselves can easily be discerned in the Guru. Isvara has specially appeared in the person of the Guru, the Isvara who has appeared in many forms, so that we who are so dull-witted become intelligent and wise. If we realise this truth and become devoted to the Guru, Isvara will cast off his disguise and reveal himself to us in his true form. Then and then alone will he remove the guise of ignorance we are donning and finally grant us, in all grace, the realisation of the truth that the Lord and we are one and the same.

To attain this ultimate goal (and there is nothing to be obtained further) we must, here and now, regard our Guru as Isvara and live according to His or Her upadesa (instructions).

The Guru is an eternal entity divine; but the individual's ignorance of the Guru's nature, makes the Guru as good as non-existent. The Guru wants reveal himself to the devoted disciple, in other words, He or She is eager to be born in the disciple's heart. The Guru will then appear as a beneficent human friend anxious for the disciple's well-being. The Guru is a person human and divine: human in regard to man's human needs and divine in relation to his eternal concerns. A thousand salutations to the Lord, the Guru, who is to cut away the cataract of ignorance from my inner eye and open it wide for the permanent reception of the ever-shining vision of the divine Truth.